So our fun in the sun is over. :(  It is so hard to get back to work!

We started the long road home on Friday.  We stopped in Montgomery, AL to see the capitol building.  I pointed out to Eric all the important places from my last unfortunate trip to Montgomery.  It was really emotional for me to go back there after the dump truck incident in 2011.  The capitol is very lovely.  We also so the First White House of the Confederacy.  I think the town has some charm to it.  Here is the two buildings: 

Alabama State Capitol

 

First White House of the Confederacy

After Montgomery we continued north to Birmingham (which also looks like a cute city) and eventually made our way to Nashville, TN.  Again we drove through the downtown area to see the capitol building, again very nice building.  Downtown Nashville is very charming too. I definitely want to come back here some day and show Eric around.  I was in Nashville when I was younger.  I remember it very vividly.  I won 2 life sized penguin stuffed animals on the milk can toss.  There is a pictures somewhere with me smiling with my two huge penguins and dad in the background with the trunk of the car open and he has his hand on his chin trying to figure out where he was going to put them. LOL!  Memories!  Here is a picture of Tennessee capitol:

Tennessee State Capitol

We drove through Kentucky and made our way to Mount Vernon, IL, a small town with 3 or 4 major interstates intersecting there.  Needless to say there are tons of hotels, gas stations and restaurants off one exit.  It is kind of a crazy place.

Saturday morning we started our last leg of the journey home.  We drove through St. Louis which is a construction nightmare.  I thought the Twin Cities were bad but St. Louis far worse.  Three interstates cross the Mississippi on one bridge and they reduced that bridge to one lane.  Yikes!  Thankfully I had us go around it through downtown St. Louis.  The rest of the journey home was uneventful…except when we ran into the Iowa Hawkeye fans leaving their game.  I never thought I’d run in to traffic in the middle of nowhere in Iowa!

We got home around 8pm. Swirl was very pissed at us.  He wouldn’t come out from under the bed.  And when he did finally make an appearance he meowed and meowed….”how dare you leave me for 10 days, you are going to pay”…is probably what he was saying.  He of course peed next to litter box.  Such a spiteful cat!  He warmed up by Sunday morning and was constantly at our side.  He doesn’t hold a grudge nearly as long as he did in his younger years…he is, after all, a senior citizen!

We spent all day yesterday relaxing. We went out to fill gas and get a car wash. The love bugs are still on there.  Stupid flies!  We also made a quick trip to the apple farm for some apples. Yum! 

It was a good trip but I’m glad to be home.

We departed the swamps of Louisiana and headed for sunny Florida.  Granted we only went as far as Pensacola but still it is Florida!  We went to the Naval Air Station to see the National Museum of Naval Aviation. It was quite an impressive display of lots of airplanes used by the navy and marines.  Dating back to WWI through Vietnam and probably even sooner than that.  We saw Marine One (the helicopter that the president flies in).  We got to see what the aircraft carrier looks and feels like when running drills.  Pensacola is also home of the Blue Angels so their planes are there and we even got to go inside an old one.  Just a really awesome display. We spent over 2 hours! 

After a light lunch we headed to the Lighthouse. 177 steps were a lot.  It seems like it was harder this time to climb up then the last time.  I guess I’m really out of shape! LOL! It was a lot hotter too.  Unfortunately, they have had a lot of rain so the water wasn’t the beautiful emerald color it was last time…it was brown :( See…

We wound our way back to Orange Beach, AL for the night.  Our room is very nice, balcony with a waterfront view but I wasn’t upgraded like last time.  So we just have standard queen beds with no microwave or fridge.  This is the first hotel on the trip that we didn’t get those and it is the most expensive…go figure!  The beach is great…this is a white sugar sand beach.  We took a dip in the gulf, the water is really warm! We went to a local pizza joint for dinner and of course played some mini golf.  We like our mini golf. We both won free game tokens which we used this evening. 

Today we spent the entire day either on the beach or by the pool.  It was such a beautiful day and the waves were great.  So much fun. I don’t think I got burned, maybe a little on my face. But my freckles really came out!  My face is very brown…not tan…stupid freckles.  We ventured out in the middle of the day to a local cheesecake place, Hope’s Cheesecake Incorporated.  Cheesecake Factory step aside, this place has you beat!  We got the red velvet and Twix.  The red velvet was good but the Twix was beyond delicious.  Best cheesecake ever.  After a day of swimming we went to the Hurricane Grill and Wings.  Meh.  My steak was very peppery…if you know me that means trouble.  My mouth is still tingling.  And it really wasn’t that great.  I wasn’t impressed with this place.  Thankfully, I had a slice of Twix Cheesecake waiting for me at the hotel.  We used our free mini golf games and played the “harder course” and both of us finished under par (we tied, I won rock, paper, scissors so I win!)  

Well I guess this means our vacation is technically over.  Tomorrow we started the 20 hour drive back home.  I’m ready to get home and see what Swirl has been up to.  I’m sure we will be greeted with pee next to the litter box and a pissed off cat who will punish us for a few days.  To the “Vet Specialist” who said that cats are not spiteful obviously never met Swirl or any other normal cat.

MORE PICTURES CLICK HERE:
http://www.kim-eric.com/2013/LoneStar/LoneStarBaseball.html

 The long 4th of July weekend is over.  I’m so sad. I really enjoyed my 4 day mini vacation.  Let’s see what did I do all weekend?  I spent quite a bit of time in the car, hence the “road tripping” title.  After work Wednesday we got an oil change…exciting I know!  Then we went for a little ride around Chaska, Carver and Jordan.  I wanted to see if the Minnesota Valley SRA campground was open.  We had quite a bit of rain a while back and the river was near flooding in Shakopee so I thought it might affect the campground. Surprisingly, it is closed for the season.  I’m not sure why and the DNR website doesn’t say why.

Thursday we went to Boston Market for lunch and took it to the local park and had a picnic. Not your typically picnic fare but it was cheap (50% off family meals). There is a really nice park by our Boston Market.  We walked around the park and enjoyed the warm air.  After that, I had to go to the 4th of July Celebration in Eden Prairie.  We played our annual concert. Normally we leave afterwards but my friend, Jenny, convinced us to stay for the fireworks.  So we stuck around and watch her kids play in the new playground in the park.  The fireworks were not bad, the show last about 25 minutes.  After fireworks there was a massive traffic jam and it took us almost an hour to get home.

Friday morning we went to the DMV at the courthouse (and stood in a very long line) to renew Eric’s driver’s license and to renew the tabs on our car…$332 later we came home with stickers and a piece of paper saying Eric can drive.  Man the State of Minnesota likes their taxes!  

We packed up the car and slowly made our way to Rice Lake State Park in Owatonna.  We definitely didn’t take the most direct route, we went through towns I’ve never been to before. We decided the weather was perfect for camping.  We met DJ and Ethan there.  We walked down to the lake (which they are drawing down :( this summer so no canoeing) and that was about the extent of our hike.  We made burgers on the open fire…I am very impressed at my outdoor cooking skills. And of course the delicious s’ mores later. We didn’t stay up too late which is unusual. Sleeping was very comfortable.  The weather was perfect.  We awoke to the birds chirping and the massive amount of daddy long leg spiders covering our tent. Thankfully they were on the outside! We packed up our site and headed to Mankato.  Danielle asked us to come see her new place.  We went out for lunch and then spent some time at her new apartment. It was nice, the typical starting out apartment.  We left there in time to make it back for 4:30 Mass.  Of course it wouldn’t make sense to take the most direct route so instead we decided to venture into Le Sueur; you know the home of the Jolly Green Giant.  Not really out of our way but it was nice to finally see what the town looks like. After driving to Mankato for over 10 years and seeing the sign for Le Sueur, I finally drove through the town.  It was cute.

Yesterday was a day of relaxation. But it was stinking hot we decided to get wet to cool off. We went to the water park at Valleyfair and hit all the slides, lazy river, raging rapids and of course the wave pool.  We were there about 2 hours.  We were starving afterwards so we went to Eden Prairie to Punch Pizza (delicious!).  After a couple of hours of watching TV, I treated Eric to Dairy Queen.  We got a car wash too and decided to “dry it off” by going for a ride.  Well the ride didn’t start off that great because the concrete on Hwy 169 exploded which put us in a very long line up of cars going very slowly.  Then we drove down to Jim’s Apple Farm for some candy.  I found maltesers…my favorite!   Look a whole box:  

Isn’t it disappointing that is the only picture I took the whole weekend!  And it is blurry! I’m really losing my photography abilities! We took the back roads back home and ran into a thunderstorm. So much for drying off the car.  LOL!

As you can tell the long weekend involved two things, eating and driving.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

We have been home now for 4 days. We eventually got on our original flight from Newport News, VA to Atlanta…it took off at 5pm. By that time most of the original people on the flight had found other flights so our plane was pretty much empty. The comforting thing is the mechanics that fixed the plane were from Atlanta so they were on our flight back. It is comforting that the guys who fixed the plane had enough confidence to fly in it. What a plus! We even gave them a round of applause. Weird. We got plenty of snacks, peanuts and pretzels and cookies, oh my! We had a 2 hour wait in Atlanta for our connecting flight home. We eventually got home at around midnight. What a long day! All told it took us 14 hours to get home. I see now in an email that Delta has compensated us for our delay with 2,500 miles. How nice of them…snicker.

The trip was pretty much a success. Delaware was surprisingly cool. I liked the state capitol grounds and the Fort. The rain sucked but we were in Atlantic City which is so dumpy outside that it didn’t matter that we were inside most of the days. Ocean City was a huge let down. I was expecting gorgeous beaches and beautiful weather. Instead we got very cloudy, rainy and kind of cold weather. And the beach was awful and the hotel was old and stinky. Yuck! The only silver lining with Ocean City, MD is that the weather was so crappy that making the decision to drive 2.5 hours to Baltimore for a baseball game was easy. I really enjoyed the drive and the game, best of all we got to cross another ballpark off our list. North Carolina’s outer banks were nice, the northern part anyways. I can’t wait to visit there again to see the southern side of the outer banks…the place I really wanted to go but couldn’t because of Irene. It wasn’t the best trip but it was still a good one.

Since we have gotten home, I have done absolutely nothing. I haven’t worked out except for the 30 minutes of tennis I dragged Eric into on Tuesday. I haven’t actually cooked a meal at home yet either. It is going to be a bad month on the fitness spectrum.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend. Byron and Paula are coming up tomorrow. We have a Twins game Saturday afternoon. I haven’t been to a Twins game in ages... For various reason we have only been to 4 this year. With my summer concerts, Eric’s surgery, vacations and family events we haven’t had much time for games. That will change...I will be going to 3 games in the next 10 days! Too bad they suck badly now and are probably going to have 100 losses. What a dismal year!

Usually at this time of year we are either in the hunt or have the division so we can look forward to playoffs. That isn’t the case this year. I can only look forward to next year. Thankfully MLB released the 2012 schedule yesterday. I have so many road trips planned in my head right now. Recently I was telling Eric I wanted to go to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh to see their stadiums. The 2012 schedule is very kind to me because shockingly the Twins play back-to-back series in both of those towns in June. Sweet! Can you guys guess where my annual road trip will be?? Ha Ha I thought so.